Termination Parental Rights
Over 175 Years of Combined Experience in Family Law

Termination of Parental Rights in California

When Is It Appropriate to Terminate the Parental Rights of a Parent?

California Family Code section 7820, specifically California Family Code
section 78222, provides the basis for which you could seek termination
of parental rights. One basis upon which termination can occur is if the
child has been abandoned. That means the other parent has provided no
financial support for that child, has little or no contact with a child
for over a year, their conduct shows the intent to abandon the child.

If you are able to meet those elements you would be able to convince the
court the other parent has abandoned the child and as such you could file
a petition to terminate their parental rights. This essentially means
they are no longer going to be the parent.

Imagine for a moment that it is the mother trying to terminate the father’s
parental right. If she succeeds, then father no longer has the right to
for instance has the right to legal custody which is the ability of making
decisions on the health, welfare and safety of the child. Furthermore,
the father will no longer have the right to
visitation or custody either. They are effectively cut out from the child’s life.

That is an example of a manner in which you can terminate parental rights
within the category of abandonment.

Who Can Seek Termination of Parental Rights?

The family code also defines who has standing to seek parental termination.
Our examples above are from the point of view of a biological parent,
i.e. one biological parent seeking to terminate the parental rights of
the other biological parent.

People who have the right to seek parental termination include:

The legal parents of a child

A grandparent of child

A step parent of the child

An adult who has actually taken over the custody and care of a child due
to the legal parents’ absence

The other basis to parental termination include child neglect; the unfitness
of parent; or the risk of serious physical, mental, or emotional injury
to a child if they return or remain at the home of either or both parents.

Consider the case of someone who is not the legal parent but who has been
caring for the child for a period of time in the absence of the legal
parents. To seek termination the child must have been left in their care
by the custodial parent or both parents for at least six months and during
those six months there has been no contact with the child or financial
support from the responsible parties. There will need to be some evidence
of intent to abandon the child. That’s an example under which, if
you’re not the legal guardian or legal parent of a child, you could
seek to become the custodian and terminate the parental rights of the
other parent.

Termination of parental rights are combined with a step-parent adoption.
There is a specific procedure by which you would combine the two together
where if you’re doing a step-parent adoption you would be filing
it concurrently with a parental termination proceeding and if and when
the latter is granted by the court then the step-parent adoption would
be completed and the court would make an order for the step parent to
become the legal parent of the child.

Parental terminations can also be done by stipulation. What we’ve
talked about so far is the process by which people go to court, file a
petition, serve the petition, there’s often a response to the petition
and then there’s a court hearing to determine whether termination
should occur. However, the parent whose rights are being sought to be
terminated can stipulate to terminate those rights. That is, they can
agree with either a step parent, or the parent responsible for the care
of the child, or with the other parent that they give up their parental rights.

If you are faced with a request by someone else to terminate your parental
rights give us a call at (714) 909-2561 because we have not only defended
these types of actions, but we have also prosecuted them.

Naturally if you’re on the defending side of it we are going to need
to work hard at demonstrating that you did not intend to abandon the child,
that you’re stable, you have the intent to spend time with the child,
that you are going to start providing financial support, basically all
the things they say you haven’t done you are going to want to begin doing.

If you are seeking to terminate parental rights whether you are the other
parent, or an adult who is currently responsible for the child such as
a grandparent or a relative taking care of child, call us. We have experience
dealing with these matters and bringing them to completion successfully.

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